Ask around, and compare prices.   If you foster a good working relationship with your vet, then they may help you cut corners.    They get excited when a pet owner actually goes out of their way to take care of their animal and is willing to provide proper vet care, so those that do, they will often go out of their own way to work with them.  This attitude tends to be especially true of rat or other small rodent owners because so few people would be responsible or caring enough to 'waste' money on a '10 dollar disposable' pet.   

For example, my vet knows my boys.  He only charges one office visit fee for six rats at one time.    Two of them have reoccuring resperatory infections from myco, so after their first office visit to get a baseline on them now all I have to do is call the office, provide their current weight using a digital kitchen scale that measures in grams, they will fill my perscription and I only end up paying for the medications. 

There are other options too.  Other rat people I know who run rescues have done their own education on how to mix and measure antibiotics and buy it in dry form much more cheaply than getting it mixed at the vets.

It's all about being proactive and doing your own research.  The better educated you make yourself, the more you can do on your own, and the better choices you can make on vets and vet care.

"Squeak squeak I tell you, squeak!" ---Ren Hoak

Snuggles (5/1/2011)

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I took my female hairless rat to the vet and they charged 150 dollars for getting her poked with a needle and a tiny bit of fruit flavored meds then the vet said she had a respiratory infection. I took her to the vet because a bump popped up all the sudden that I thought was a swollen lymph node, and the vet said it was either that or a tumor. So I told the vet it just had popped up the day before so it couldn't have been cancer and she didn't seem to believe me. All vets care about is money, I mean they sorta care about the animals but they care more about their pay-checks.

The trick is shopping around to find a vet you like.   I did want to offer a correction for your tumor comment.     While your little guy probably had something like a simple abcess, bumps that pop up suddenly can actually be cancerous.  We don't know what's going on under the surface without a biopsy after all.   One of my guys had a bump pop up on his back suddenly that was a tumor.

Yes, some vets are only in it for the money, but most aren't.   You don't become a vet to be rich, because so few people want to spend money on proper care of their pets.  As I said in my previous post I've had several willing to work with me and lower their cost, sometimes because of money issues on my part, and sometimes because of other things. 

"Squeak squeak I tell you, squeak!" ---Ren Hoak